The Berlin festival's co-founder discusses funding, educating and the city itself.

The festival world is a many-splendored thing. You're just as apt to find yourself in a field somewhere in Hampshire, enjoying big room techno as you are sitting with eyes closed in a concert hall in Montreal, listening to guitar drones. Berlin's Club Transmediale leans toward the latter type. It started in the idealistic late '90s, a time in which the intersection of electronic music, art and various other disciplines seemed just a click, cut or theory away.

As time has gone on, things have inevitably changed. Club Transmediale broadened its remit, for example, as evidenced by the new tagline "festival for adventurous music and related visual arts." Other things, though, have stayed the same. While it may be respected in electronic music circles, the event's existence hangs in the balance each year, dependent on unreliable funding sources. In advance of this year's edition, we talked to one of CTM's co-founders Jan Rohlf about all of these issues and more.